A yearslong campaign of bullying left a Long Island cheerleader wanting to kill herself — even getting mocked over the sudden death of a horse that was bought for her emotional support, according to a $6 million lawsuit.
The accuser, a 16-year-old girl identified only as A.S., says she suffered prolonged episodes of bullying across four years in Smithtown Central School District schools — including a vicious attack at a party that was filmed and shared online, according to the lawsuit filed late last month in Suffolk County.
The alleged victim’s parents were so alarmed they even tried to sell their home to leave the area — and bought her a horse as an “emotional support animal,” the suit said.
However, that backfired when the “horse was tragically killed in front of her by the veterinarian,” the suit said, without explanation — after which the bullies started calling her “horse girl,” the suit alleges.
Despite video evidence of the attacks, the alleged mean girls suffered no repercussions — likely because they were the girl who started it was a key member of the cheer team, according to Kenneth Mollins, an attorney for the accuser’s family.
“They acted as though this kid was a godsend to the school,” he told The Post of one of the alleged lead bullies, who enjoyed interviews with local papers over the team’s success.
Meanwhile, the bullied girl “had enough and she even threatened to kill herself if they forced her to go back to school,” her attorney said. “She would beg not to be sent back there.”
The Post is not identifying the victim or the alleged bullies because they are minors.
A.S.’s misery began during the 2018-2019 school year, where another girl — whom The Post is identifying as A.M. — allegedly “constantly bullied” her during recess and lunch, the lawsuit claims.
The victim’s family was asked to fill out a complaint under the Dignity for All Students Act, but an investigation claimed the allegations were “unfounded,” according to the lawsuit.
Although the pandemic split apart the victim and bully, they came together once again in 2021 at the Smithtown West High School’s varsity cheer team, where A.M. allegedly harassed her with a handful of other girls, the lawsuit said.
During a house party the following summer, one of the girls on the cheer team allegedly mocked A.S., screaming in her face that she had kissed her crush, the suit claims.
Another cheerleader then yanked her to the ground by her hair as others started to also punch and kick her.
“A camera phone was filming the incident the entire time, it was premeditated,” the lawsuit said, noting how the accuser’s family eventually filed a police report about it after already alerting several school officials to the video as proof.
The accuser then quit the varsity cheer team because of the initial bully, A.M. — who was allowed to stay on it, the lawsuit said.
“The school clearly didn’t know how to handle this and never actually did anything to help this girl,” said Mollins, the family’s attorney who is working on multiple bullying cases on Long Island.
“The school’s brilliant plan was to have the bullies enter the school through the side door and the victim through the front door of the building, that way they wouldn’t interact and there’d be no problems. But that clearly didn’t happen,” Mollins said.
Officials at the Smithtown West High School did little to help the victim, the lawsuit alleges.
And when the victim’s family got so desperate to the point where they tried keeping her out of school, Mollins said the district threatened to call Child Services on them and forced A.S. to come back.
With A.S. back at Smithtown West, she was once again at the mercy of bullies, who allegedly flung food and insults at her during the homecoming celebration last October.
Her parents bought the “emotional support” horse in November, the suit said, without explaining why or how it was “tragically killed in front of her by the veterinarian” three months later.
The teen threatened to take her own life, and was later allowed to finish the year being homeschooled, but it wasn’t the end of the bullying, according to the lawsuit and her family lawyer.
A.S. needed to return to school a final time in May, where bullies allegedly met up with her and filmed another assault. The school district once again found that the claims were “unfounded,” the lawsuit states.
Mollins said this was not uncommon, with several schools in Suffolk County allegedly employing similar strategies when it comes to such extreme bullying cases.
“Working on these cases, it seems that schools don’t have the proper resources
The district declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said it takes all allegations regarding bullying “very seriously” and investigates each case.
Attempts to reach the girl identified as the initial bully were not immediately successful Monday.